From Grenfell to the Green Belt: the future of housing

Partners:

With house prices rocketing and millions priced out of owning their own home – or forced to accept an enormous burden of debt to do so – housing remains a key issue today, with competing concerns about supply, economics and the environment. And for many of those lucky enough to be able to buy, the fallout from the Grenfell Tower fire has left them in a kind of property purgatory.

In June 2020, the prime minister, Boris Johnson, stood behind a platform with the slogan ‘Build, Build, Build’ to announce what the government claims are the most radical reforms to the planning system since the Second World War. This latest attempt to meet the 300,000 homes per year target is a key component of the government’s ‘levelling up’ agenda on which Johnson has heavily staked the success of this premiership.

Key to delivering that housing is the government’s reform of planning rules, set to go through parliament this autumn. Many have expressed concerns about protecting ‘green belt’ land around cities and argue that this new legislation gives carte blanche to developers to concrete over the countryside. They also question whether it is a real solution to the UK’s housing shortage. Critics point to ultra-low interest rates, foreign investors, second-hand purchasers and developers hoarding land as the real culprits.

But others point out that in any normal market, high prices would lead to an expansion in supply that would push prices back down. They argue that planning rules that restrict the supply of new homes are leading to more and more money chasing the few homes that are available, pricing many people out. Local opposition to development, they argue, should not prevent building more homes to solve a national crisis.

While the government claims to be the champion of first-time buyers, those who purchased leases in apartment blocks latter affected by the cladding scandal after the Grenfell Tower fire now find themselves abandoned by the government and forced to pay eye-watering remedial bills. With no solution in sight, the cladding and fire-safety scandal looks set to continue into 2022. The government has begun to legislate to change the leasehold system, but it remains unclear whether this is a simple concession or a long-term ambition to phase out the leasehold system entirely. Few seem to be questioning the assumption that the costly, wholesale replacement of fire-prone cladding is the only solution.

With so many competing demands, what are the immediate issues in housing that need to be addressed? Can renting ever be a substitute to buying, and if so, how do the government’s planning ambitions align with the need for social housing? Is ‘build, build, build’ a sustainable policy in the age of increased environmental concern and a desire to protect the green belt? Or is the obsession with protecting greenbelt land misplaced? Does the cladding scandal mean that one solution – building up rather than building out – is permanently tarnished?